Batman (1989) 4K Movie Review

 

Batman (1989) 4k Ultra HD

Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren

Rated PG-13

Do I really need to give you a plot synopsis of a Batman movie at this point after 1000 different versions? Batman (Michael Keaton) fights crime in Gotham City and accidentally causes an up and coming mobster named Jack (Jack Nicholson) to fall into a vat of unknown chemicals that turns him into the Joker. Not only is it a physical transformation, dyeing his skin white and turning his hair green, it causes the already innate psychosis of a cruel criminal to become even worse. He goes mad. He no longer cares for material power. He wants to kill people. LOTS of people. It's up to Batman to stop his plans but his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, might be falling in love with a photographer named Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), who is town to get pics of the Batman! This distraction could spell his doom.

I remember when this came out in the movies back in the day. Trust me, it was an EVENT. Besides the original Christopher Reeve Superman movies, there really weren't any other superhero movies to this point. I also remember there being a lot of WTF? when it was learned that Michael Keaton would be playing Batman. I mean he's basically a shrimpy, average looking dude, and short. How was he going to play the dark brooding toughness of Batman? And Tim Burton, the director of Pee Wee and Beetlejuice, two weird comedies? It just didn't seem like it would work on paper, but the visual product was very successful. 

Let's get something out in the open first. To me, this movie is more about the Joker than Batman, which was repeated almost 19 years later. Jack Nicholson steals the show completely much as Heath Ledger did a generation later. Jack Nicholson is even listed on the marquee first.  I think if you added up the screen time between Batman in costume and the Joker, the Joker would have tipped the scale. Nicholson plays the Joker somewhere between the campy goofiness of Cesar Romero's Batman tv show and outright subdued matter of fact violence of Ledger's portrayal. He is funny but also dangerous and unpredictable. 

Keaton, on the other hand, seems to play it more like Christian Bale. Doing more through action than speaking. There's not really a wide palette of acting on display for his part. His was never my favorite Batman. Mainly because if you're going to act mainly through body language and facial expressions, you have to be a GREAT actor. Also, physically, Keaton just is NOT a good Batman. You're telling me this shrimpy guy is going to lift a full grown man by his jacket 2 feet off the ground? I bet Keaton did like zero body building training or fight choreography for this film. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Michael Keaton. Bird Man is a great movie! But here he was just serviceable. 

As for the 3rd member of the main cast, Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, she is a beautiful woman, but my god, what was up with her hair in this movie? Most of the time it looks like she has 3 or 4 different hairstyles on her head at any one time. She just looks really bad in this film, and that's hard to do for a such a gorgeous woman. Again, she's ok. 

I have never been a big fan of Tim Burton, but I think he did a really good job with this movie. He was able to meld his weird expressionistic sets with a superhero that matched his aesthetic. He would not have been a good choice for Superman or Wonder Woman. He needed a hero with dark dystopia vision. A hero that was weird and broken.  

It was also cool to see Jack Palance and Billy Dee Williams in small roles. 

Prince did some songs for the movie but to me they were subpar for him. I would say this was his last hurrah as a relevant and powerful pop figure but he was definitely on the way out. Danny Elfman's symphonic score was much more memorable, especially the iconic Batman theme he wrote. 

The main attraction of this movie is the Joker and the action scenes and fun still hold up 36 years later. 

The 4K picture looks amazing! I have the box set of all 4 movies so I plan on watching and reviewing them all. Then on to the Bale trilogy and maybe even the Twilight Batman with Edward in them. 

My Grade: B+

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (Book Review)

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way

By Marcel Proust

Translated by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kimartin

Revised by DJ Enright

Published by The Modern Library, 2003

List Price: $16

The narrator of Swann's Way is fond of beds and sleeping. In fact, laying in bed is what you might say is his hobby. In our day and age he would be someone that likes to "bedrot". Of course, this novel was published in 1913, long before you could lay in bed and watch tv or be on your phone. Instead, for entertainment and/or combat insomnia, the narrator enters into a virtual world of his memories. This is because being in bed is a place where he can remember all the places he has slept through his life, and along with the places he remembers the people and circumstances of his life during those moments in time. He is especially fond of Combray, a small town where him and his parents stayed at his grandparent's house when he was a child. 

Even though his family is quite interesting, being upper bourgeoisie,  they think they are better than the common rabble and always aspiring to be the envy of their neighbors, he is more intrigued by a family friend named Swann. At first, Swann visits a lot, but then the narrator's family begins to shun him because in some way Swann's wife is scandalous. 

The second half of the book, entitled "Swann in Love" flashes back to an earlier time as Swann meets and falls in love with Odette, a charming woman who isn't exactly beautiful, but has some intriguing x factor that Swann finds undeniably attractive. Another problem is she isn't averse to playing the field with other men and even other women. You get the feeling she'd be up for a threesome if Swann introduced the subject. 

In Search of Lost Time, which is comprised of 6 volumes, is a series that is hardly read anymore to completion these days. I know of NOBODY that has even read the first book. I am sure they are out there though. Despite that, it has the reputation of being one of the greatest works of literature produced in the West. I've always had the ambition to read the whole thing but it always felt like a work you would read in retirement so you could focus your entire thought on it without distraction.

It was not an easy read by any means. It took me about 2 and a half months to read this first volume. It has to do with the density of Proust's writing/thought. He can be looking at a lamp on his nightstand or the shape of his pillow and slip into all manner of time and space adventures. He travels back to Combray and is once again anxious and melancholy when his mother does not have the time to kiss him goodnight, which feels like the meaning of his existence. 

That's one of the things that stands out about the book, that every object, every place, is a catalyst for memory or emotion. Even Swann gets affected by this theme, over and over being almost spiritually overpowered by a musical variation he hears. So strong that it might have been what made him fall in love with Odette. 

The narrator is not fond of particular points in time and space, because time does not stop. It keeps barreling forward. He values his memories of the places or things much more than the current reality of them because they are eternal, not subject to decay and death. 

The love affair between Swann and Odette is to me one of the most realistic depictions of unrequited love that I have ever read in literature. I don't know that Odette loves Swann. I got the sense that she was just using him for money. She didn't DISLIKE him, she just wasn't in love with him. He was convenient, and when he becomes inconvenient she begins to disrespect him more and more. Meanwhile Swann just becomes more and more of a simp. 

I said it was a somewhat hard read. Sometimes you just want to say "Ok, Marcel, we GET it! Next scene!" but Proust just sinks deeper and deeper in his thought and language. It's almost like a musical invention where he weaves a theme or a thought into different contortions or variations in an effort to write a perfect statement. Don't get me wrong. This is not purple flowery prose. Just very creative and very exact when dealing with very abstract ideas.

To me, this is definitely not a series you can read back to back. I need a break from Proust's world. But I will definitely be returning for Volume 2: Within a Budding Grove after a brief siesta of a month or two....or three. 

My Grade: B+

A Complete Unknown (Movie Review)

 

A Complete Unknown

Directed By: James Mangold

Written By: James Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Elijah Wald

A very young Bob Dylan arrives in New York City with hardly any money and no place to stay. He hasn't thought ahead very well. His main goal involves meeting his idol Woody Guthrie who is in a hospital suffering from some sort of disease that doesn't allow him to speak. When he visits him, one of Woody's friends, fellow folk legend Pete Seeger is visiting as well. The two musicians ask him to play them a song. Bob obliges and promptly impresses both men. Pete allows him to live at his house and once Bob gets his toe into the music world of New York City, there is no looking back.

I have to say, I am a big fan of Timothee Chalamet from the Dune movies so I always look forward to his work. He does a great job playing Dylan and especially his singing which at times is hard to delineate from the real McKoy. It's kinda funny, but I think ANYBODY with even a modicum of singing ability could do a good job imitating Dylan because, let's be frank, he is and was NOT a good singer. Chalamet conveys Dylan's understated personality well, maybe TOO well. This was the second time this week, the other being Nosferatu, that I sometimes had to struggle to understand what an actor was saying. 

Edward Norton comes off as a bit smarmy playing the goody two shoes Pete Seeger whose music landscape you almost want to see destroyed by Dylan. Seeger seems like a Mr. Rogers type who is too nice for his own good. 

I was really intrigued by the beauty and talent of Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. I guess she was in Top Gun: Maverick but I had no memory of her. I look forward to seeing more of her. I also loved Boyd Holbrook's portrayal of Johnny Cash in a small but pivotal role. 

While I enjoyed the actors in the movie I would say the weakness of the film was in its direction and writing. I felt that even after the end of the movie, Bob Dylan was STILL a complete unknown. He's like the Joker. We never learn the truth about his life, whether outer or inner. No real origin story. He comes on the scene with his talent and songs already fully formed, waiting to be discovered. I don't know where he was born, what his childhood was like, how he got into music and how he learned to play guitar. I do not know when he started writing songs, and what kind of literature he read. I don't really know if he ever really loved anyone or what he truly thought about anything. It's almost like the only inferences you can make about him is through his actions, not his words. His whole life is encrypted, and this movie is definitely not a cipher for it. 

I felt the script had way too many scenes of him playing a song for people and then close up of their face going "whoa, that song is amazing". Dylan just scrounges from place to place to write songs in people's houses or apartments and he has no human connection to the people in his life. They are just a convenient roof to write his songs under. His emotional connection to the people that love him is tenuous at best. He doesn't seem like a normal human being, more like a demi god who people are in awe of and fall in love with him but there is nothing given back. Similar to Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison in the Doors. Eccentric is saying it mildly. 

It was rated R I guess for a few F bombs. No nudity, no sex scenes etc. except for Monica in a t-shirt and panties (I give that scene an A+!) lol 

I would recommend seeing the movie for the performances, acting wise and music wise, but just know that if you want to learn anything about Bob Dylan, read a biography. 

My Grade: B-

Podcast Episode 286: Dan Da Dan First Encounter

 

Podcast Review: Insomniacs After School Volume 1

 

Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc (Book Review)

 

Empty Theatre
By Jac Jemc
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 
Print Price: $28

What you have in this book is two idiots who somehow find themselves both rulers, one of a kingdom, and the other a co-ruler of an empire. 

King Ludwig II of Bavaria would rather finance Richard Wagner's latest opera and build elaborate castles right out of chivalric romances than get down to the nitty gritty of ruling his land. He's been spoiled from the day he was born in terms of material wealth. Emotional support from his parents...well, let's just say its nonexistent. 

Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Ludwig's cousin, who is known better as simply Sisi, was caught up in the glamour of being wooed by an emperor, but quickly figures out that her role is more akin to a prisoner. Her mother-in-law, the Archduchess, controls everything and everyone is just concerned with Sisi being a baby factory for male heirs. Even when she has babies, the Archduchess whisks them away to be raised as royalty who have more attachment to her than her natural mother. 

Meanwhile, Ludwig is running his kingdom into the ground with all his wasteful financial expenditures while Sisi and her husband have to deal with the increasing nationalism spreading through their empire which will ultimately lead to a century of death and destruction in Europe. 

The novel generally alternates between chapters about Ludwig and Sisi from their young lives until their deaths with them corresponding and meeting each other from time to time.  The author Jac Jemc admits at the end of the book that she took a lot of liberties with the source material and says that the two real life figures themselves constructed a novel of their lives to suit their own viewpoints. 

Early on, you can tell the political stripe of Jemc when she says the Crusades "marked one of the darkest moments of human history, a pure and unveiled campaign of extermination, erasure, intolerance".  I guess she seemed to forget that the Arabs went on war campaigns all throughout the Mediterranean and conquered what used to be most of the Roman Empire. As for erasure, the Hagia Sophia USED to be a church. Once it was conquered by Muslims, it was converted to a mosque. Hmmm, erasure? I'm sure no innocent was killed in these wars right? Muslims good, Christians bad. 

Once I got past that moment of historical idiocy, I actually enjoyed the book. It recalled moments of Harry and Meghan in the sense that you have two people who act like they want to escape from the powers and duties of their rank but show no qualms in exercising that power when it suits their ends. Yes, I want absolute power but no responsibilities. I have no interest in the nuts and bolts of ruling. I have no interest in making my nation better. I have no interest in helping my people. 

I will say Sisi is the more morally sound of the two. She does try to help unfortunates from time to time, but she was more concerned with her hair and waistline instead of diplomacy or statecraft. They are both pretty revolting people really. Ludwig reminded me a bit of a foreshadowing of Michael Jackson, a person that had so much money they could insulate themselves from adulthood. Sisi too comes off as a child trapped in an adult body, who only towards her end was able to carve out spiritual space for herself. 

I enjoyed the book but it wasn't good enough to keep so I will definitely be putting it in the donation pile. Also, Jemc as an author did not really impress me enough to seek out another work by her. The ending of this novel was almost laughably bad right out of Elvis and Jim Morrison conspiracy theories. 

My Grade: B

Podcast Episode 280: Touring After the Apocalypse Volume 1